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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28291587">Gifts + Sacrifices</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/N1ghtshade/pseuds/JustAnotherWriter'>JustAnotherWriter (N1ghtshade)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Wunderkind 0.5 [7]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>MacGyver (TV 2016)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, I'm going with the names from the OG series so sue me, Pre-series Wunderkind, Prison camp, Whump, Yes I know Gwen's name is wrong, wunderkind</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 00:08:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,937</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28291587</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/N1ghtshade/pseuds/JustAnotherWriter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>If Gwen steps in and intervenes she makes herself a target. That's a dangerous thing to become in this place. People who stand up tend to get cut down.<br/>That's a problem for future Gwen.<br/>Okay, there are a lot of problems for future Gwen.</p><p>A small introduction to the Wunderkind-verse Aunt Gwen as well as my somewhat belated final Whump Advent Calendar fic!</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Wunderkind 0.5 [7]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947766</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Gifts + Sacrifices</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I had kind of planned to keep all of Gwen's story under wraps till I got around to introducing her in the main series, but since this idea fit too well with the final prompt and I'm also...gonna be really slow on the Wunderkind updates unless something changes drastically in the new year, I'm going to go ahead and share her backstory here!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Gwen Jackson tucks her knees to her chest in the corner of a wind-whipped tent and concentrates on tying a knot in a piece of twine. Her numb fingers are struggling to loop the threads over each other, and to make things even more of a struggle, the ball of squashed-up threads and shreds of cloth that forms the head of the little kerchief doll keep wanting to fall out all over.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There's a lot of different celebrations happening around the camp, in quiet corners and tucked-away places. Gwen has seen, and sometimes provided a few materials to help improvise, some decorations hung surreptitiously on scrubby trees, and the week before that, helped to construct several fragile menorahs. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The tiny lights struggling to glow, pieced together from castoff things and flickering weakly in the shadows, were a tangible reminder of hope. As are the small, makeshift gifts Gwen is preparing for the children unfortunate enough to be here.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe she deserves it. But they absolutely don't.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She knows thinking that she in any way deserves this life is a one-way ticket to letting the people who put her here win. But she can't help but think that the years she's spent in this place are all too similar to the years her sister spent with the monster she shared a home with. And had a child with.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I couldn't save her. Maybe I don't deserve to have anyone save me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>She wonders what would have happened if she'd confronted James at the funeral. If she'd fought to have the little boy with the big sad eyes and the stiff starched collar and the fidgety chapped hands given to her. James is no fit father.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe she should have done it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the thought of what could have happened if she lost was too big a weight on her shoulders. If all she did was make that boy's life worse, she'd have hurt him the same way she hurt Ellie.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She thinks his name was Angus. Funny, how much you can forget in five years. At least when those years are full of endless rounds of the same monotonous existence.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She's not sure what she's doing every time she cuts another notch in the twisted, wind-bent tree by her tent. Marking time seems to have no meaning anymore. She started with the days. Then worked her way down to weeks. The bark is still filling up with tiny scratches. The sharp stone tucked under her bed pallet is useless for anything but that. Not enough of a weapon to fight ten guards at once.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There is something else she could do with it, but she tries not to think about that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She finishes the doll, stands up, stretching the cold stiffness out of her muscles, and walks over to the tent where she's seen the family with the little girl.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They don't speak her language and Gwen hasn't learned to speak theirs yet either. But a child's innocent smile doesn't need a translation.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That little girl doesn't deserve to be here any more than Angus deserved to have been left with the man who for all practical purposes killed Ellie. Gwen knows it wasn't the car accident that the official sources claimed. She didn't have her clearances for nothing. Ellie was killed by a car bomb that was in all likelihood meant for James himself. He might as well have held a gun to her head and pulled the trigger. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And you decided he was better qualified to raise that little boy than you might have been.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>No. I thought fighting him over it was a battle I would lose, and Angus would get caught in our crossfire. I couldn’t do that to him. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You were prepared to take your sister and run, once.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That was different.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Was it really?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There’s nothing I can change now, even if it wasn’t. We all made our choices. Ellie made hers and I made mine. Even if they were mistakes. </span>
  </em>
  <span>If there’s one thing Gwen knows all too well, it’s that sometimes there’s only a choice between bad and worse. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gwen can't do anything about the boy she left behind. But she can do something good for this girl, here and now. For as much good as it does.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She's about to duck back under the flap of her own tent when she hears the screaming.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She turns around, instantly alert. She can see a glow of lights from the side of the camp near the hills. That side is always patrolled more carefully. At first Gwen assumed the guards worried that prisoners might slip through the fence and escape unseen into the wild mountains. They can search the flat plain to the east with the spotlight at the gate, but the mountains have too many crevices and scrub trees.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Still, escape is almost a moot point. The water rations they're given at the beginning and end of every work day are carefully monitored and they're not allowed to store water anywhere on their persons or in their tents. Doing that is a death sentence. There's no chance to run if you'd die of dehydration before you found a viable water source. Still, some take their chances. Gwen chooses to hope they made it even though she knows the truth. Sometimes denial is the only comfort she can cling to. She’s afraid if she lets the truth in she’ll never survive it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the rare escapes aren't the real reason the guards are so careful with the mountain side. There are rumors going around the camp that a guerilla group is smuggling armaments to the prisoners and a revolt is imminent. Gwen hasn't done anything to dispel or corroborate them. The chances of success, if it's true, are minimal. But if the whole camp does believe it, they might be able to rally in force. There are more of them than the guards. Even weakened by hunger and exhaustion, they could win. But it would take all of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She knows enough to know an outsider like her would never be able to rally enough people to succeed. But Hadid, the dissident leader who was locked up here with his twelve-year-old son two years ago, he just might stand a chance.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Unless the guards decide enough is enough and kill him now. And any hope of these people ever getting out of here might die with him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If Gwen steps in and intervenes she makes herself a target. That's a dangerous thing to become in this place. People who stand up tend to get cut down.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That's a problem for future Gwen.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Okay, there are a lot of problems for future Gwen.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Hamid is screaming, wordless pleas that have no language but desperation. She thinks he's trying to deny working with rebels, pleading that there are no weapons in his tent, but the words are garbled.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And his son Rakim is kneeling on the ground outside the tent, hands behind his head, his eyes closed and shoulders shaking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gwen can't save anyone here. But Hadid can.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It's not even a choice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She steps in between the guard and Rakim, shoving the gun out of the way with the same brash confidence she used to steamroll everyone who argued she didn't belong in the Army. Or that she didn't have what it took to handle special ops.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Leave him alone!"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The guard spins the gun around and smashes the heavy end into her face before she has time to do anything else.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She hits the frozen ground hard enough to drive the breath out of her. The whole left side of her face feels raw and sharp spikes of pain are driving backward from around her eye and forward from where her head hit the dirt. She can't get up. The world is a sparking haze of black and flickers of light. She can hear someone yelling but it's all faint and distant.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then there's nothing.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>When she wakes up, she's lying on a lumpy pallet, and she can feel the warmth of a small flickering fire on her cheek.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She tries to move and stops short at the spike of pain it drives through her head. But she has to get up. She has to know if the boy survived.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Stay still," someone says, in heavily accented, broken English.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She stops moving. There's a feeling of heaviness on her face and head, and she slowly reaches a hand up to find out why.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the gun hit her it must have gashed her face badly above the eye. The blood has frozen into her tangled hair, laying it down in a stiff mat over the entire left side of her head and down her cheek.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She can feel something rough dabbing her cheek. When the person caring for her steps away, she sees that it's the little girl she saw earlier. The rag she's holding is lumpy and squashed, but it's still recognizable as the kerchief that only an hour before, Gwen was shaping into the raggedy doll.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She gave a gift and it's being returned.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something about that raises burning tears in the corners of her eyes that even the pain hadn't been able to force past the permanent dehydration.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She must have passed out again, because the next time she wakes up, there's only one person with her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hamid.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Rakim?" she forces out, although it's nothing more than a breathy whisper.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"He is safe." Hamid replies. "They searched my tent and found nothing."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Good."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gwen doesn't tell him she knows. About the stone behind the tent that covers a deep hole. About the burlap sacks she's seen him place there when the guards are at the far end of the camp. About the shapes she's too highly trained to believe are anything but guns.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She's grateful his secret is still safe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She wonders if she did what she did for nothing. But maybe she'll never know. Maybe stepping in and temporarily diverting some of that blind fury to herself made the guards reasonable enough to actually search the tent. Or gave Hamid time enough to collect himself and give them an answer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe she'll never know if what she did was ever the right thing. And she'll just have to live with that uncertainty.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If she lives long enough for that to be a problem. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>An injury like this is more than likely going to be her death sentence. There's no way the other prisoners have the supplies to treat her, and the camp doctor won't waste his time on a foreign soldier who was hurt standing up for a known dissident.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hamid shifts slightly, and the glint of firelight on something in his belt catches Gwen's one good eye.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I was unsure if I could trust you, American. But you risked death to save my son." Hamid takes a breath. "I thought perhaps you were on no one's side but your own. You are with us after all."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gwen can see how she gave him that impression. She's been focused on survival. Keeping her head down and staying out of trouble. The opposite of Hamid's strategies.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But they're not so different after all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Can you fight?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She's positive she's concussed. There might be a skull fracture given how hard the butt of the rifle hit. Her orbital bone is cracked if not broken and she can only see the vaguest blurry shapes out of her left eye.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She can still aim and fire.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yes."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hamid presses a gun into her hand. "Then tomorrow we free each other."</span>
</p>
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